Backwater War: The Allied Campaign in Italy, 1943-1945

A year before the much-heralded second front was opened at Normandy in 1944, the Allies waged a campaign in Sicily and Italy—an assault that was marked by argument and dissent from beginning to end, highlighting the fundamental differences in strategic thinking between the Americans and the British. Winston Churchill favored scrapping what would become the Normandy invasion entirely, focusing instead on the soft underbelly of Nazi Europe, but American planners summarily rejected any plan th...